Ashot Petrosian
Who was Ashot Petrosian?
Armenian mathematician (1930-1998)
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on Ashot Petrosian (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
Ashot Vezirovich Petrosian (Armenian: Աշոտ Վեզիրի Պետրոսյան; June 2, 1930 – February 23, 1998) was a Soviet Armenian mathematician and computer scientist working during the key early years of computing in the Soviet Union and Armenia. He was born in Vardenis, a town in the eastern Armenian highlands. He studied at Lomonosov Moscow State University, a top institution for math and science in the Soviet era. There, he engaged in advanced mathematics and the then-new field of computational science at a time when electronic computing was quickly changing scientific research.
Before Fame
Ashot Petrosian was born on June 2, 1930, in Vardenis, a town near Lake Sevan in what was then the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. He grew up during a time of heavy industrialization and ideological pressure across the Soviet Union, when the state pushed scientific and technical education as tools for modernization. In the postwar years when he was coming of age, there was a huge investment in mathematics and engineering across Soviet institutions, and talented students from the republics were often recruited into top universities in Moscow.
Key Achievements
- Founding member of the Mergelyan Institute of Mathematical Machines in Armenia
- Founding member of the Computing Center of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences
- Contributed to the design and development of the Nairi series of digital computers
- Participated in Armenian contributions to the ES EVM Unified System of Electronic Computing Machines
- Earned a PhD in Computational Mathematics from Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1964
Did You Know?
- 01.Petrosian completed his PhD in Computational Mathematics in 1964 under Julius Anatolyevich Schrader, a supervision arrangement that connected him to a lineage of prominent Soviet applied mathematicians.
- 02.He was a founding member of two separate major Armenian computing institutions: the Mergelyan Institute of Mathematical Machines and the Computing Center of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences.
- 03.He contributed to the Nairi computer project, a Soviet-Armenian machine that was among the first computers designed with a user-friendly command language intended to make computing accessible to engineers without specialized programming training.
- 04.The Jubilee Medal he received in 1970 was awarded across the Soviet Union to mark the centenary of Lenin's birth and was given to scientists and professionals deemed to have served Soviet society with distinction.
- 05.Petrosian was born in Vardenis and died in Dilijan, two towns in Armenia separated by geography and character — Vardenis on the arid shores of Lake Sevan and Dilijan nestled in the forested mountains of the Tavush region.
Awards & Honors
| Award | Year | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" | — | — |